Tag Archives: positive affirmations

Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourselves. Today as I am writing this the first big snowflakes of the season are falling here in the midwestern United States. Yes, it is that time of year again. How did it go so fast yet again?! It is good to constantly remind ourselves that, as highly sensitive souls, we must strive for balance in our lives by adding in some time alone to recharge and for some creative self-expression as we set out to accomplish the many tasks that accompany this busy holiday season that is quickly approaching. Express your creativity in ways you used to love to do as a child but haven’t found time for lately–the activities we loved as children (like singing, writing, art, or dancing) are often our true desires–taking just a little time daily for this artistic self-expression will give you new found energy, rejuvenation, and a satisfying sense of accomplishment. Also, remind yourself to check your heart rate occasionally on busy days and breathe deeply and slowly to slow yourself down. Cortisol, the stress hormone, is harmful to our bodies when it is called upon too frequently so we need to learn relaxation techniques to take care of our adrenals. Laying down for 20 minutes with eyes closed (with just the intention of slowing your heart rate and following your breathing as you try to make it slower and slower) does wonders when you are feeling anxious and starting to spiral with negative thoughts. Positive self-talk and affirmations are important as well such as: “There is plenty of time for all the things I want to do”, and “I love and approve of myself”, and “I give myself permission to be the best that I can be”.

These are good reminders that Christmas is about Love. Love is the opposite of fear and can heal it. You can love yourself out of these fear-based anxieties that originated in a childhood that did not provide a safe place to be yourself. Also since you may have had to numb ourself out to survive as children, you may have learned not to pay attention to your bodies urges to tell you what it needs. For example, “thirst” can be something that you learned not to feel and so your bodies are very dehydrated without your realizing it. You”ll be amazed how much better you feel when you start making yourself drink more water on a daily basis. I drink 32 ounces in the first 4 hours I am awake in the morning–the rest of the day always goes so much better when we start our day really hydrated. Try it and see! And make sure to drink at least 64 ounces a day and even more on days you have extra stress. And if you are trying hard to “hold it together” in spite of the stressful feelings that the holidays can trigger, try a different approach–let it all out and have a good cry! Crying is good for you and studies show that emotional tears have higher levels of toxins that are released than in regular tear production.

I want to talk more about the benefits of crying because society has such a stigma against it. How often have you heard on a media outlet about a public figure or celebrity seen crying and then heard it referred to negatively as a “breakdown” which is ridiculous. A break “through” is a better term. The urge to cry is just truth that is coming up to be healed (comforted and released). Think of it symbolically as light breaking through the clouds, and someone finally “seeing the light”. I like to think about the song “I Can See Clearly Now” as if the writer of that song just had a good cry and a period of healing and now feels better and has healed a wound from childhood that was blocking him from functioning at his best. He is now en”light”ened! I also like to think of the description by a pilot right before breaking the speed of sound–he describes that, “the cockpit shakes the most right before” and then it is smooth sailing once he breaks through. If we resist our bad feelings and suppress them we may never know what aha moment or lesson we could learn–we must trust that our feelings are trying to teach us something.

More of my views on the benefits of crying are demonstrated in my reply to a highly sensitive and gifted commenter names Elisabeth who was concerned about how emotional she feels and how often she cried. I hope it is helpful to all of you HSPs out there who can relate to how she felt. Here is the interaction that transpired in the comment section of one of my pages on this blog:

Hello Roxanne,
I can honestly tell you i feel God directed me to find this site! On behalf of every person who has benefited from your choice to help people, thank you so much! I honestly felt something was wrong with me all my life. I am highly sensitive, emotional, and very hard on myself. I was actually going thru one of my attempts to “figure out” what it is that makes me the person i am, I have never been able to pin point exactly what was, all i knew is that normal people do not feel such intense emotions , I am highly empathetic, and can practically feel what others feel, even before they feel it themselves. All my life i have thought of it as a curse, I am great with people, and feel like God gave me the gift of encouragement, yet the one person i could never figure out or help was the person staring back at me in the mirror. upon reading your “About Me” section, it was as though everything you discribed was everything i have been dealing with all my life! I dont know why, but I could never pinpoint exactly what caused me to be like this, only within the past couple of months i came to the realization that it had to do with my mother and not being shown love as a child. Ive stopped trying to get others to understand, because to them it is ridiculous, unless you have truly been hurt in that way, you would never understand the extent of the damage it can have on a persons soul, especially a shy little girl. All my life I feel like I have in a way punished myself for not being good enough, and literally crippled my own personal growth and prevented myself from becoming better because in a weird way i felt i didnt derserve it. What hurts most is reaching out (to my husband, my mom, sisters, brothers etc.) and trying to explain how I feel, and being rejected, ridiculed or as my husband would say “stop feeling sorry for yourself, and take control of yourself”. to me, being put down and rejected by ppl who are supposed to love me unconditionally, especially when it took so much out of me to come out and say it, its like taking a knive and slowly puting it thru my heart.
Also, I am a Christian, but upon trying to learn more about who i am, I turned to horoscopes, because it was the best thing I could find to accurately discribe who i am. Im not sure if you know about them, but i am a pisces girl with a cancer moon. (in case you dont know, that s a double whammy. Pisces and cancer are both the most emotional signs. =(((((((((((
In conclusion, I guess my question to you is how can I get past what I went thru as a child and grow from it? It has put a huge strain on my marriage, and even my husband has tried to understand me, but it just feels like my words are not getting thru to him.
Thank you again so much for your time! May God bless you generously for what you do and all the lives you have impacted!!

p.s. Is it normal for a person like me to not be able to talk about anything emotional without crying? Just within this past year I can not say how i really feel without bursting into tears, and then starts the process of telling myself that its stupid to cry over it etc etc..

Thank you for your wonderful, thoughtful and wise comment. I agree with everything you say here. I wish I had time to respond in depth to everyone’s comments–I am so happy to know this blog is helping so many. Thank you ALL for all the wonderful comments!

I just want to mention a few things: why the sad((( face for being the most emotional signs–I don’t know anything about horoscopes but sounds like you are emotionally “gifted” !!!. Our families of origin (and our society too) instill in us this shame about our emotions–it is not true!! It is wonderful to be emotional–our emotions are meant to be our “compass” for finding happiness in our lives! You can learn how to have boundaries to keep out the negative emotions from others and tap into the positive emotions that are innate in you. Learning to love yourself is key and processing your pain from the past includes grieving about the love and acceptance you never got for having this emotional gift. Crying is necessary to tell your truth about how you have been treated.

It is normal to cry if you feel the need–sounds like you have a good reason to cry. It spills out at inopportune times because we are holding it in so often. Having a good cry from time to time is so healthy and recharging! Also, often survivors like us cry when we are misunderstood and don’t feel “heard” when we are actually “angry”–but we were punished for expressing our true assertive positive selves when we were tiny children and so we learned to repress it–they were threatened by our positivity and truthfulness! So it is kind of a post traumatic stress response. It is not stupid in any way to cry–crying is positive and healing when it is grieving about how you were mistreated in the past. Crying releases a truth that needs to be told!

There are 2 kinds of crying (…or more):

1)“Grieving” is the healthy releasing of the truth of your injustices and it is cleansing to release your truth–try to catch what you are learning as you cry and write it in a “journal for your eyes only.” Crying has lead to the writing of my best songs–there is always hope at the end and you feel a release and a new inner strength.

2)“Despairing” is a kind of crying that can be destructive if it is habitual because while doing it you are being very mean to yourself and beating yourself up (negative spiraling) the same way your abusers did. Survivors often need to release and admit these despairing feelings at first which are still repressed from childhood–upon realizing how bad you must have been treated to be a child in such horrible despair, your innate compassion kicks in and you begin to love yourself a little more each time–releasing layer by painful layer of truth is how we heal.

Learning that HSPs with childhood wounds must stop the habit of despairing and turn it into grieving (and be very very kind and gentle to themselves when they are sad and build themselves up instead of continue the abuse of themselves that started as tiny children) will change their lives. I hope you will continue to read more of my blog because I talk about the importance of grieving losses from childhood quite a bit. Elisabeth, by crying you have bravely started the process of emotional healing–you are on your way to finding out how special and gifted you are and have always been! I hope this has been helpful to you.

To all of my wonderful readers, I appreciate you so much! This Holiday season may all of you open yourselves to receive God’s (The Universe’s) unconditional love and light that shines upon you at all times–and to know that God (The Universe) has bestowed upon you the gift of compassion for the feelings of others. Be kind to yourself, allow yourself to cry, and “shine your light” upon yourself and others and you will heal!

Hi everyone! Summer is upon us and I hope you are enjoying the many opportunities that arise in this beautiful season. For those of us in the midwestern United States, we know the warm weather is short-lived so we try to get outside and enjoy it while we can. As highly sensitive people though this “pressure” to enjoy the outdoors can add to our “to do” list that is already too long as it is! Please look at the weather as a bonus to get outside in nature to recharge from the usual stress in our lives–just setting aside even 10 minutes alone in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening to walk, ride a bike, or even just sit outside and look and marvel at the sky or walk barefoot in the warm grass will help you enjoy the moments of summer more fully and not feel like the summer is passing you by yet again.

Today I woke up with a very strong feeling of shame and dread. Along with it though there was very strong clarity about the truth of these feelings and the shame and dread very soon faded away as I got on with my day. So I wanted to share with you the process that I go through and how I got to this emotionally healthy place!

Immediately when feeling this strong dread and shame this morning I went straight to comforting myself and saying to myself, “Wow, I must have done something really great for my true self yesterday–I must have really been expressing my truth and shining my light…. these feelings from childhood coming up to heal are the evidence and so I must be extra kind to myself today.” I KNOW this now because of many years of analyzing and paying attention to my own emotional patterns. I learned that when I wrote a great song, poem, or even when I just had great uninhibited fun or even exercise, this strong shame feeling would always pop up for me the morning of the next day. This is because these feelings from childhood were my experience day in and day out until I had to give up as a child and repress my true self and all of the memories of this unbearable shame in order to survive.

Back then as a child, when I expressed my true wise self, or my joy in my own creativity, I felt shamed to the core. I KNOW this now. I no longer allow these dreadful feelings when they arise in me to negatively spiral in the following way: My inner critic used to say, “What is wrong with me that I feel this shame, it feels terrible, almost unbearable, I feel disgusting, I must have done something horrible and shameful, I thought I had a good day yesterday but it must not be true, what was I thinking, I am never going to feel better, why do I even try”…blah blah blah, down down down the spiral went, draining all hope and positive energy out of me, leading to a depressed feeling and sometimes just numbness (dissociation) as I trudged though the day. Wow, it’s hard to believe I used to spiral this way!! But I did! My inner critic has now completely been replaced with positive affirmations that I KNOW are true. I don’t let my inner critic take over and I over-ride it with love and compassion for myself. It took a lot of inner work but the whole process was well worth it.

My thought and feeling cycles are so different now as I know that how I treat myself with my inner thoughts create the kind of day and experience I am going to have. This is more than just positive thinking or law of attraction techniques. I had to go through a grieving process that actually changed my core beliefs about myself to the point that I learned that I had a lot to be sad about, angry about, and plenty to comfort myself through. I had to delve into the past to see where the negative beliefs came from and get justice (inwardly) for the little girl inside who felt so much like an inferior being. It was not the truth and I had to figure out what the truth was for ME.

As a mother I knew, and my college education in child development told me, that NO child is inferior and deserves to be shamed–so the inner grief work was a challenge for me to put together this puzzle to find out the truth about what happened to me to make me feel so bad about myself. Memories started coming back to me and feelings that had been dormant and frozen in time became “available” to me again and I learned compassion for that little girl inside. This took a while and everyone’s journey to healing will be different and take as long as it takes to work through your layers of illusions that keep you from seeing the truth of your brilliant shining light and true self.

So please be patient with yourself if you are in the middle of feeling all the pain and not yet seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Or if you are feeling comfortably numb but joyless and lacking motivation. The light is there. It is because you had this bright light and higher spiritual level that bullies in your life had to put you down and put out your light. You may have been a threat to their distorted view of the world where “their” feelings were the center of the universe. But your light never went out–it was just dimmed or covered up with illusions and blocks that are not true about you. You have the power within you to turn your light back up high yourself! No one can do it for you. It takes time to learn how to process through the layers of dormant feelings.

Writing out your pain in a journal for your eyes only is so important to the healing process because it gets you out of your left brain’s spiraling or scattered thoughts and connects you to your right brain’s compassion for yourself and creativity. Document your progress in the journal and then go back and make yourself read the hopeful stuff you write, you will begin to see how amazing and wise you are that you survived it all and that there is so much to look forward to as you grow and grow in your own compassion for your wounded inner child. As you grow to protect your inner child and stand up for the rights to all of your feelings, the negative thoughts about yourself begin to change.

Another thing I had to realize was that no one was going to rescue me but ME and I had to make a decision to never ever beat myself up again. I remember saying to myself once, “That is it!!, that is the last time! I am never going to waste my time in such misery again!” And it stuck. I still had bad days when shameful feelings came up to heal but I comforted myself instead. Maybe I stayed on the couch that day BUT I was kind to myself instead. I put away my to-do list, watched a favorite movie, made myself my favorite warm soup or hot tea, wrapped myself in a soft blanket, “loved” myself through the bad feelings and had compassion for my inner child who deserved love and comfort. And I allowed myself to grieve the happy carefree childhood that I never had. This is so important to learn to do for ourselves–we hsp survivors may feel like we got skipped as we nurture our children and everyone around us–I realized this was important for me to take the time to mother my self for a while. Then I would feel SOmuch better after I took a day for myself like this–I would feel renewed and recharged and it started a habit of a positive cycle of healing and change.

These were the new patterns and beliefs that were laying groundwork for new neurons in my brain for a new future and over-riding the shame from childhood. This is the process of recovery from emotional abuse. It is not easy. It is not fun. It is painful. But with delving into the pain at first I noticed that I at least felt more “alive” and this was a “spark” of light that kept me going towards the painful truth and not escaping into a comfortably numb existence of denial and dissociation that had for years kept me from moving forward towards my dreams and desires. Instead I started continually delving into and through the pain to find my truth and aliveness—I acknowledge the painful feeling andreleased it layer by layer in my journal or to a trusted, safe witness and gradually I emerged on the other side of it all. The shame and dread that I wake up to is now just a weak residue, a glimmer of the truth of the past and all I worked through to get here–to where the joy in my heart can’t wait to get started on another day of being me in a Universe that I feel connected to and know that it supports me!

And so I say to all of you out there who are on what feels like an endless healing path, there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is awesome! When you can tap into the light and love from inside of you and believe and know that you deserve it, then you will be able shine your light and recharge and renew yourself anytime you want to!

P.S. More posts are coming soon! I am working on putting together a post with all of the comments and replies from a frequent commenter who calls herself Belinda. Her story is an inspiring example of a highly sensitive soul with bullying parents whose painful drama unfolded here on this blog–she bravely reached out and expressed what was in her heart and she came out the other side and into the light–and now she is shining her own light to help others. Other commenters and my replies will be highlighted in upcoming posts as well. (I ask all commenters for their permission first before highlighting it in a post.) Be kind to yourself, HSPs, and I’ll be back in touch soon!

Hi everyone. Today I was out on my patio getting my morning dose of Vitamin D from the sun (hallelujah, the warmth is finally here to stay!) and writing down ideas for my next post. When I was finished, the song “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp came on the radio I was listening to. You know the one…”sometimes love don’t feel like it should…” Anyway, I had to laugh out loud with amazement as it seemed like a sign from the universe/God that my topic was approved–it seemed clear that I should trust my intuition to write about what I had decided to focus on and that was: what hurts the most in life emotionally can reveal the truth of who we really are–and physical pain can teach us the exact lesson we need to learn to move forward–both kinds of pain help us grow and heal to become our best selves.

Of course the lyrics of the song do not imply that, but the title jumped out at me as confirmation and I have always loved that song! It always makes me want to get up and dance and celebrate being alive for some reason. Sometimes when you are feeling the pain from childhood wounds, acknowledging you were wronged, and you know you didn’t deserve it, you feel so much more alive and you have the right to your feelings about it!! Your anger can be channeled into positive energy to take action for your self and improving your life and moving forward towards your dreams! Also the song implies that you know how love should feel but you are willing to take the painful risk of loving again for the chance of being loved in return.

I so look forward to dancing again to songs like this and forgot how much I missed it until it was taken away when I recently injured my back/hip (S.I. joint)! My pain has almost completely healed. Yay! I still have restricted movements but I have so much to look forward to. And I am on my way to complete healing and I learned much–I will spare you the details until the end of this post for those interested.

Okay, so about the lessons to be learned from the emotionally painful things that happen to us…. I believe that all of us are here on this planet to learn lessons about who we are, what we are capable of, how to achieve inner peace, love ourselves the way we deserved to be loved, and how we can use our gifts to help others. For those of us who are gifted with high sensitivity and intuition it is so difficult to figure these things out until we realize that a lot of the pain we experienced as children was pain of the people around us that we just absorbed and internalized as our own.

One of the most complex examples contributing to many of my clients’ childhood wounds are when the parent is a malignant narcissist. I am sharing these examples of extreme cases in the hopes that they will be the most helpful. When a malignant narcissist starts to feel any emotional pain they get rid of it immediately by blaming the people around them. The highly sensitive child is the perfect target to take away the malignant narcissist’s pain because they absorb it completely and don’t retaliate. As kind and loving spirits, highly sensitive compassionate children would never dream of blaming someone else for anything so they can’t imagine that their parent might be wrong or sick or unhealthy in any way. Now that they are adults they are starting to see the light of how they were “used” to take away the parent’s shame, self-hatred, blame, and self-doubt. Hsps can heal as they acknowledge the truth that they were fine before malignant narcissistic parents took away their hopes and dreams and gave them their pain in its place. They absorbed it all and believed it to be true–saying to themselves, “I am to blame, there is something wrong with me, I am not good enough, I must try really hard to be someone else other than who I am in order to be loved, I am not as good as I think I am, I cannot trust my feelings, I must not make any mistakes, I am unloveable, I am unworthy, I hate myself, or I must be a disgusting human being for upsetting my parent in such a way.” This is what a highly sensitive compassionate child can determine to be true when they are not seen for the kind and sensitive soul they are but used for the dumping ground of the negative emotions of a highly dysfunctional family.

They numb their feelings to survive as children–They repress the pain and decide to be obedient (if they were the Golden Child) or they rebel (if they were the Scapegoat). Either way their mind protects them with illusions about their parents in this case because they need them to survive. They were after all children doing the best they knew how–there is no way for a sensitive child to detect danger when for as long as they can remember, this is what a loving family looks and feels like and it is ingrained in the neural pathways in their brains. They believed the distorted view that their malignant narcissistic parent presented to them and insisted upon because they believe in the goodness of life innately–they trust completely which is a beautiful thing. It is a wondrous gift to be able to trust in life, to trust in the universe, that it will support them and show them the way if they trust their feelings and our intuition. We have the inner guidance and wisdom to be happy and fulfilled, enlightened and loving, full of vitality with the perseverance to press on through the ups and downs of life. They all (HSPs) have this ability inside of them, this trust in the goodness of life, but it was taken away from them.

But what happened to them isnot really about them at all. They were victims, yes, but they don’t have to be victims ever again when they work through the truth of what happened to them as children–layer by layer, injustice by injustice, voicing the truth of how much it hurt, how they didn’t deserve it, and see how they lost their trust in themselves and their feelings. Once you start this process of healing the layers, you feel lighter and a little kinder to yourself each time. It is a blessing when you are in the midst of an episode of despair because someone you trusted criticized you and you suddenly realize, “Oh wait, this is how I felt as a child when my malignant narcissistic mother would feel threatened when I expressed a brilliant creative idea and put it down–I was smarter than she was!” –or something to this effect.

DOCUMENTING YOUR TRUTH STATEMENTS is a method I invented during my years as a life coach. Journaling these revelations by writing statements of what you learned about yourself when a new layer of pain is uncovered helps to document your progress. Then when you are feeling lost, depressed, or blocked make yourself get out your journal and read over these statements and you will see the true voice of your soul being uncovered. Statements like “I had brilliant creative ideas as a child”, “I discovered I was actually smart”, “I was kind, caring and innocent and did not deserve to be criticized and abused!” These are truths come to light and will forever be true about you–they will help you change the internalized beliefs about yourself so you will develop your true voice. This will help you stop listening to your inner critic and say,” No! That is not true about me”. Then say your new-found personalized positive affirmations (truth statements) to yourself instead. Your self-doubts will gradually fade and your confidence will grow stronger and stronger.

Childhood pain comes up to be healed in layers–it is like the truth of your untold story from childhood wants to be told and when you are strong enough, the painful feelings pop up unexpectedly in your lives. You sometimes unconsciously provoke painful situations in our lives so that the original trauma can be healed. For example: you are feeling grouchy, irritable, numb, and lost, and you criticize your husband for not supporting you enough, for not just listening, (he is trying to solve it and tell you what to do and you just want to be listened to and heard). He responds with, “Something else must be wrong because I have been listening to you a lot lately but you are still really grouchy.” You blow up and yell, “I wanted an apology but instead you are attacking me” and you fall in a heap of crying, blaming, angry despair. The feelings directed at your husband are so real to you but you are actually experiencing post traumatic stress from your childhood. Your husband deserves about 10% of the anger that you are feeling but the other 90% is from your childhood. (90/10 Principle. John Gray,…Venus and Mars).

In that moment you are reexperiencing the unresolved feelings of your self as a small child with legitimate needs to be seen and reassured and loved–you were perhaps rejected by a malignant narcissistic mother who was too busy with her own agenda to stop and be the loving mother you needed in that moment. Perhaps instead she lashed out at you for being too sensitive, told you to knock it off and be quiet so she could think. When you cried harder she may have slapped you on the bottom, screamed at you, and told you that you were giving her a headache and to go play somewhere. You went to your bedroom and cried and cried and she ignored you–you felt rejected, scared, and humiliated but you felt so ashamed that your mother was angry at you that you wiped away your tears and went out and said, “I’m sorry Mommy I will try to be good”. Then, she smiles at you and says, something like, “good, you learned your lesson about obeying me”.

This is horrible abuse for a highly sensitive gifted child whose only way of surviving this situation is to be a shell of her former self, deny all of her legitimate feelings and needs for pursuing her gifts and talents and dreams, and become a little robot shell of a person with all her feelings pushed way down deep to the point of repression. A child incorporates the internalized message of, I must not trust my feelings or I will upset my mother/father and I need her/him. To the less than sensitive observer this exchange seems harmless enough and they might even think “what a good child” or worse “what a good parent to have such a child that obeys so well”. That is one reason that it is difficult for HSPs to change our negative beliefs about ourselves–most of society doesn’t yet understand or support a childs need to express needs contrary to the parent in charge.

You won’t feel guilty about leaving your abusive narcissistic family members behind when you understand that if malignant narcissists are in emotional pain for even a second, they lash out and blame someone else for it–they are not feeling pain the way you and I do–they get rid of it immediately. They put on acts of great suffering because they know it works to make us feel guilty. Don’t fall for it–it is all an act. They are going about their merry way without a trace of remorse or guilt. They pull out the tears and anguish when other family members are around to get them against you–they get relief and control back from these antics so don’t feel guilty about leaving all of the craziness behind.

So back to how pain is helping you have a better life…. The truth too painful to bear as children has to come up as the painful truth or you can’t acknowledge that it happened, release it, learn from it, and find yourself! It is a painful process but you are worth it! Your true voice has been in hiding for far too long. Next time something happens to you that is so painful it makes you want to give up on a person, try telling yourself, “this pain is exactly how I felt as a child when ___ happened to me!” Then write it out with all the pent-up emotion you can conjure up and see if you don’t feel better when as you write you realize you were an innocent victim and have a right to all of those feelings!

You may just be so grateful for the realization that you were a child who deserved so much more that you will even feel grateful for the person in the present that hurt you! They helped you bring a painful truth from your childhood to the surface to be healed. You healed a layer of pain from your childhood! On to the next! Soon you will begin believing in your goodness and see your inner wisdom and kindness. You will begin attracting only loving giving people like you because your bright shining light of your special highly sensitive intuitive soul can now shine through the existing layers making them much easier to process through. The illusions that helped you survive will fall away and a new-found confidence and ease will emerge.

So remember, from the layers of pain and hurt emerges the wonderful and amazing true YOU! You can do it! I hope that my words can assist you through this complex healing process.

Part 2

Okay, now for the health update: The recent painful injury to my low back/hip sacroiliac joint (S.I.) is another example of how the universe/God helps us along our path with painful obstacles that are lessons in disguise.

My holistic chiropractor was unable to answer my many questions about what I could and couldn’t do and what would help and hinder my recovery. So I made an appointment with a physical therapist that was prescribed by my family doctor. She was able to tell me exactly what ligaments I had sprained, the reasons for my pain, exactly what movements to avoid and which ones were so safe so I could heal in the fastest amount of time. She explained exactly why it had happened to me–with no core strength in my pelvis from lack of exercise, the ligaments were sprained severely requiring 6 to 8 weeks to heal completely.

She explained that sitting and standing hurts because those actions depend entirely on the ligaments I strained, whereas walking uses different muscles. I can sit for a one hour at a time now, can drive for short periods, am allowed to walk on flat surfaces only, and should avoid all stairs as much as possible until I am fully healed. She showed me the correct way to pick up something from the floor, bending at the knees and holding onto something for support–I had been doing it wrong every time. She has given me homework of daily exercises to start strengthening my core muscles as I heal and I am doing them diligently!

Before I went to my physical therapist, there were 3 occasions when I had no pain in the morning (that is usually when I was in the most pain). I had gotten so excited I ended up doing too much that day and the next day I paid for it with pain that sent me back to the couch with ice and rest. The third time it happened I had this surreal moment of anguish but at the same time a moment of grace and surrender–a reminder of how, even though I was exiled to the couch, I had a glimpse of what I had learned spending most of the month of May on the couch unable to move without the severe pain recurring. The month of May gave me an entirely new perspective on my life and this moment of grace made me permanently slow down and appreciate that the small things in life were actually huge things to be grateful for.

It made me realize: the things I missed being able to do most were things I did not expect because they were lost in all the busy activities I took for granted. I missed most being able to sit up and play my guitar and sing my songs without pain. I missed being able to sit and write creatively on my computer for long periods (my last post I had to write and edit in long hand first). I missed being pain-free so that I could concentrate again and get back to coaching my clients–having chronic pain is exhausting and I had to put my coaching on hold for a while (but it has now resumed 🙂 ). Biking, hiking, and dancing were also activities I loved and never found time for. These are all things that have now been moved even higher on my priority list–maybe this injury is the only way for me to really learn what is most important to me in life.

A bonus from all this is that my husband had no idea how much I did around our home and has a new appreciation for all the years I spent managing our home because suddenly, he had to do it all! I didn’t even realize how much I took on. Now he has wonderfully agreed to continue taking on his share of these tasks even after I fully recover (including half of the grocery shopping 🙂 ). After all, I have a successful career too now and it is only fair! My husband was really amazed at how much work it was and he now has a new appreciation of how much time and energy I spent doing it. As I recover I am learning to delegate tasks that need taken care of, but more important than that, I learned to just let the unimportant things go so we can just spend more quality time together and be in the moment enjoying life! I am very grateful for a husband with such a kind and compassionate soul.

With every new victory in my physical abilities, we celebrate together and both of us appreciate our life together and our health so much more. Soon I will be able to dance again. We both loved to go out dancing together when we were younger–why don’t we do that more often! Now with my physical therapist teaching me core strengthening exercises, I am determined to get strong and enjoy things with my husband that we both love to do together: biking, hiking, and dancing! Yay! Through pain came important changes: the ability to slow down, be grateful, and relax and live in the moment; delegating tasks so I have more time to commit to the work and activities that I love; commiting to getting and keeping core strength and stamina; and letting the unimportant things go!

I hope my words have inspired you to look for and find the lessons amidst all the wonderful ups and painful downs of life. I hope I have helped you to find strength in the truth re-experienced by your wise and gifted inner child. And I hope I’ve helped you to slow down and discover the joys in the small blessings in your life.

Hi everyone. It’s November!—and there’s a briskness in the air and the awareness of the holidays approaching. For many highly sensitive survivors that comes with a bitter-sweet feeling–of light and love from God above (the true reason for the season) mixed with the grief of a lost childhood and sad or painful holiday memories of being misunderstood and diminished. Or it can be an overwhelming feeling of dread on some days for many reasons related to your present relationship with your some bullies in your life, and on other days of stress–being caught up in the busy-ness of getting ready for the big days ahead for your loved ones–often too busy to feel anything at all.

Depending on where you are in your recovery, it is normal for you to be feeling all of these different ways. Be kind to yourself no matter how you are feeling and please try to slow down, breathe deeply and take self-care breaks–stop and be aware of the negative messages in your head and change them to kind words that you deserved as a child such as: Everything is going to be all right, You are doing a good job, It’s okay to make mistakes, You are special, deep, and a rare gift to this planet.

Affirmations you can say to yourself are: I love and approve of myself, I am safe, and, my favorite, I give myself permission to be the best that I can be. This last one is helpful especially because often others may have been threatened and jealous of your gifts and so, sensing this, because you were highly sensitive and empathic, you protected them by hiding your gifts away so they would feel better. Giving yourself permission to be the best that you can be can be so empowering and satisfying–like suddenly realizing, “Oh, wow, I don’t have to protect anyone anymore and I can just relax and be awesome!” Many of you feel guilty for everything even for your own creative and artistic gifts! A caretaker from childhood may have caused you to feel shame for expressing them. Please take your gifts out of hiding and take a good look at the truth of the gifts and talents that you brought with you to this planet. They are your gifts and yours alone and you deserve to enjoy and feel good about them and share them with others!

Hi everyone. Finally a new post! It’s been a wonderful, eventful summer! It’s been very exciting and my husband and I are so proud watching our children start their new independent lives with confidence, hard work, determination, and exhilaration as they pursue their dreams and desires. It’s an emotional time of bittersweet endings and wonderful new beginnings for all of us.

Although we still have an entire month of summer weather left to enjoy, this time of year always seems like the beginning of a new year because of the new academic school year starting locally and at universities everywhere. The excitement of buying school supplies and getting new books with new subjects to learn about still affects me in a positive way. I was able to master my ability to relax and enjoy myself in the summer, my most difficult season, and truly “be in the moment”.

Now I am excited to be returning my focus to my true purpose in life–comforting and encouraging highly sensitive souls (HSPs) with childhood wounds to heal and feel GOOD about themselves. To all of you sensitive souls out there reading this blog, I feel your presence and I understand your struggles and frustrations. Here are some helpful tips and reminders for survivors of an N parent:

1. Compassion for yourself is always rule #1. You did a great job surviving a very difficult childhood. Instead of getting loving support you may have been ridiculed and undermined. You DESERVED compassion but you did not get it. You must learn to give it to yourself. You really can be the ideal mother or father to yourself that you never had. As survivors, you may often be too hard on yourselves. If you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, stop everything and be nice to yourself about it. You have every right to feel stressed and overwhelmed. Imagine the most loving mother comforting you through it. What would she say to you? “Everything is going to be all right. You have worked so hard and you deserve to rest. Put your feet up and I’ll get you a warm blanket. How about some green tea and a warm cup of soup.” 🙂 Put your worries out of your mind–does that task really have to be done today? No, it does not. It is very important to know that until you have unconditional compassion and love for your self you will not have the energy to give compassion and love freely to others! Healthy, loving relationships are reciprocal–you must have compassion to give to others if you want to attract people into your life who are truly “giving” in return.

2. Forgive yourself. When you have an N parent you were never taught that it’s okay to make mistakes. When you make a mistake, a loving parent would say to you, “It’s okay, that is how we learn and you learned a lot from this–maybe it is even good that it happened.” If you had this message growing up, imagine where you’d be today! You could glide from one mistake to the next without beating yourself up about it, instead you would say to yourself, “that’s okay, I am only human, we all make mistakes and that is how we learn.” Also forgive yourself for trusting the wrong people. Because you had an N parent that you trusted for a long time, you may be confused about what a healthy relationship looks and feels like. It takes time to learn to love yourself and start attracting people who also love themselves and have real love to give. Forgive yourself about trusting the wrong people along the way, this happening is often a necessary stepping stone on your journey to finding your true selves and honoring all of your feelings.

3. Allow yourself to have some inner confusion at times. We all have inner confusion at times. Even Deepok Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, and the wisest psychotherapists on earth have inner confusion at times and this is how we continue to grow and learn. This is part of the human experience on this planet. You cannot and must not feel that you have to be on top and have it all figured out all the time! Your N parent may have made you feel this way probably because you were so very bright and right so much of the time, they felt compelled to knock you down and never gave you credit for your brilliant ideas. So when you weren’t on top and were naturally feeling confused about some unexplained event in your lives, they probably often took this opportunity to point out to you, “See you aren’t so great, this happened to you and this is proof! This may have very confusing and painful to you which just further made you harder on yourselves. You may have said to yourselves, “I must never let people see that I don’t have it all figured out. I must be even more perfect!” If you can see how unfair this was to you as a child and how you deserved to feel okay about having inner confusion, you will feel much relief and realize you deserve to be… human. It is so unhealthy trying to be perfect. You must allow yourself to grieve for the time you spent feeling unworthy of acceptance and that you are not good enough as you are in each given moment. Sometimes you have inner confusion–it is okay…let it be. In time, the lesson you were to learn from it will be learned and you will progress again towards expressing your true voice.

4. Guilt, shame, and doubt are thoughts and feelings from elsewhere to be ignored. Ignoring your “inner critic” is hard to do because it feels like it’s your “self” telling you these negative messages so you think it must be true. But these messages and feelings are not from your true self–they are incorrect beliefs from surviving your N parent which you have internalized! You can learn to recognize them and identify them as your “inner critic” which you must ignore. It is not the truth! Your inner critic is WRONG about you. Most often the exact opposite is true. When you become conscious of your “inner critic” you can over-ride your thoughts with positive affirmations such as “I love and approve of myself”. Getting in the habit of catching yourself when you are unconsciously beating yourself up will change your life! When you can stop your negative thoughts and know and believe that they aren’t true, your true purpose and compassionate self will begin to emerge. This is not easy and this leads into my next tip. Sometimes you must get help from a safe person you trust fully to grieve and let out the pain from your abused inner child before you can begin to change these negative beliefs about yourself.

5. Consider reaching out and getting help. If you are projecting bouts of anger and despair onto your loved ones and are confused about why this is happening, it helps to understand the roots of this confusing pattern. In inner child grief work, this is called “transference” and is a very important and necessary part of the healing process. It is as if you must pull the other person into the drama of the original feelings from childhood so that you can process these feelings and heal them in the present day. Post traumatic stress (PTSD) is the eruption of past unresolved childhood pain into your relationships in the present. If you don’t understand what is happening it can wreak havoc on your present relationships. But if you work this out with a skilled coach or counselor that you fully trust, you can learn to understand your feelings as they come up and you will not need to act on them. You can learn how if you are able to display the out-of-control feelings with this safe person who is able to stay impartial and unaffected and still be compassionate even to angry or blaming projections. Depending on the severity of the abuse and the transference symptoms, look for an experienced and sensitive counselor or coach with knowledge of inner child healing and are humanistic in their approach. As a coach I can help clients with mild symptoms of post traumatic stress–I have experience with this as I not only worked through my own transference and projections with a therapist but also because my husband and I worked through our projections and transference from our childhoods onto each other to the point of working through most of our co-dependence issues. We were able to do this because of our deep trust in each other and because of my training, my own self-growth which had to happen first, and my knowledge about healthy communication skills, grieving our losses, and what constitutes healthy boundaries.

I will be sharing even more helpful healing tips here on my blog in the coming weeks and months. As a highly sensitive person who survived an N parent, you can learn techniques to love yourself and heal your childhood wounds so that you can have the peace of mind and confidence in yourself that you DESERVE. I hope that my tips have been comforting to you. You are a special highly sensitive soul and your healing is necessary so your God-given gifts and true self can be actualized and all your dreams can come true. You survived a N parent–be kind to yourself! Now is your time for healing. I care and I am here for you.

Hi everyone. May is approaching. It’s a big month for many. If you have a difficult relationship with your mother, you may find yourself here, reading this, because you need support on how to cope….

If you are a mom then it may help to stay focused on the fact that this is a special day for you as a mother–my two children and my husband like to make it special which is wonderful and I look forward to spending the day with them and being the focus of their attention. My daughter’s birthday is always around Mother’s Day and our anniversary is in May so there is always alot going on.

If you are not a parent then allow yourself to be busy with all the positive things that are Spring related–even spring cleaning and decluttering to bring renewed positive energy into your home. (Distracting yourself may only be helpful if you are also working through any painful feelings that arise by writing in a journal for your eyes only or purging your pain verbally with a safe person in your life who can be an enlightened witness for you.) I allow myself to be distracted because I know in my heart now (after all of my inner grief work) that it is okay for me to detach from any relationship that does not feel like I have the freedom to be ME! I no longer feel guilty for putting LOVE and self-compassion first in my life. It is for your higher good to have healthy boundaries in your life–detach from people who you do not feel safe around to be YOURSELF! After you fully heal and feel safe to be YOU without being triggered and stressed then you can reassess your desire to have a closer relationship with any people in question. It is okay whatever you decide to do–just do what is the least stressful for your healing soul.

So, focusing on being positive and on the other positive events going on for you in May and making them special for your loved ones will help to supercede any negative feelings that may arise. And isn’t that what we all need to do all the time anyway? Build ourselves up with positive messages–affirmations if you will–the opposite of what we (highly sensitive children) may have received growing up. For example, tell yourself “I can do it!” instead of “you can’t do that–who do you think you are!” And “I love and approve of myself” instead of “what were you thinking–why did you do it that way!” And say, “I am safe” for the dreaded “how dare you talk to me that way–you are so ungrateful!” Perhaps now you can see how ridiculous the accusations and blaming are, because you know the truth about you is the opposite and these were said out of inner fear, inner shame and ignorance and not necessarily to hurt you. But at the time, these accusations were excruciatingly painful to you. As highly sensitive children we trusted our caretakers more than we trusted ourselves.

There are so many more examples you may be thinking of, but the point here is not to believe these negative messages in our heads, given to us by someone with conditional love as a parenting method that was passed down for many generations without guilt. Conditional love is not love. The opposite of these messages is probably more the real truth. When you find yourself thinking something negative like “I am never going to get this done” or “I am not good at this”–turn it around and be the ideal mother to yourself that you never had. Say “I am doing a good job” and “I am great at this” and “look how much I got done already”. You deserve these positive messages now and you deserved them as a child.

I can feel the stress of Mother’s Day approaching from all of you outthereand so I want to give you some additional extra support to help you stay strong and be true to yourself and honor your feelings. As highly sensitive people, we want so badly to do the right thing, the kindest thing, the most compassionate response at all times and so we feel guilt for not wanting to honor thy mother on this day that is meant to honor those mothers who are honorable. And so I am going to write out some quotes from a book that helped me in my darkest hours when I needed them most at the age of 25. The name of the book is “Cutting Loose–An Adult’s Guide To Coming To Terms With Your Parents”. This book by Howard M. Halpern, Ph.D. is full of wonderful emotionally healthy ways to deal with every kind of difficult parent you can imagine. There is the martyred parent, the despotic parent, the seductive parent, the moralistic parent, and of course the parent with a narcissistic disturbance but who is remorseful about their actions if you confront them. The book talks about all kinds of ways you can learn to communicate with these kinds of parents and for some of you there may actually be some light at the end of the tunnel if your parent is genuinely remorseful! A very helpful part of the book is the very last chapter that talks about dealing with the narcissistic parent that takes an adversary stance. Here is some of it:

“The narcissistic parent in a adversary posture is an enraged peacock. When you stop trying to win his (her) nurturant caring by being a compliant extension of him, when you no longer exalt him, when you stop following his pre-scribed script, he will react with the indignant certainty, “If you are not a part of me, you’re against me.” And, if you require reciprocity in your relationship with him, if you insist on a flow of give and take, he will feel that you are trying to take everything from him and always have your own way. He (she) may be willing to write you off rather than submit to such an obviously unfair demand on your part, and unfortunately you may have to let him do just that.”

“The form a parent’s rigidity may take when it hardens into an adversary position will differ with the type of inner child he has, but what they all have in common is enormous rage and outrage if you fail to act as they expect. And theirs is not a transient outburst at unexpected frustration or disappointment–their fury may calcify into a chronic suspiciousness or hatred in which you can sense the willingness to destroy the relationship with you and even to wreck your happiness and theirs rather than accept a new way of relating.”

“Depending on you, the experience of your parent perceiving you as an enemy will either so traumatize you that you will choose to regress back to the old song and dance, or will so clarify how impossible it is to have a viable, constructive relationship with him that it will make it easier for you to terminate the tie. You know what going back means; you’ve been there. Under the circumstances, if you’ve come so far that you’ve been able to change the song and dance and this has done nothing but propel them into an adversary stance, it is clearly better to make the painful decision to let it go.”

Hoping this is helpful for you to read! As I have said before, it takes a lot of inner strength and outside supports to take the action of setting boundaries with a parent. If you are one of the people who is in this position and struggling with guilt on this Mother’s Day week, please know that you are not alone. I am here to say, everything is going to be okay, if you will be especially kind to yourself and your wounded inner child this week. Think back to some things you loved as a child and do that for yourself on Mother’s Day. Ride your bike, play with your dog or cat, skip through a field of flowers, read a favorite comic book, watch your favorite show, take a bubble bath, draw a silly picture, or finger paint. If this just seems too silly to you, wasn’t it fun just imagining yourself doing those things? That is the power of visualizations and affirmations to change your mood–it really works! The strong part of you can mother, nurture, comfort and love the wounded inner child part of you on Mother’s Day–imagine the adult you comforting the child you.

This powerful exercise will help you in your healing if you do it whenever you are feeling a lot of self-doubt, guilt, or emotional pain. Also do something special for yourself. Maybe you could buy yourself a small gift you’ve been wanting or wanted as a child as a reward for being strong. You survived! And as a highly sensitive person (HSP), you are stronger and have more to give to others because of the compassion you recognize that you deserved but never received from your mother. Be the mother you never had to yourself and you can begin to heal your childhood wounds and find your true voice and become the person that you are meant to be. God Bless You All.

Today I have decided to release the lyrics for my song, “Finally I See, Now I’m Free”. This song was written at a time when I realized the futility of a relationship in my life and was grieving for what would never be–but also discovered an inner strength and a new found sense of freedom. I hope it brings you some comfort and strength during this difficult week.

Hi everyone. I’m happy to be back. I had a wonderful vacation and it is also great to be back home. I am feeling renewed and energetic now (five days after we returned) but I was extremely exhausted when we first got back. And my husband bounced right back after like one day–and so, comparing myself to him, I was feeling very much lost and empty and discouraged…. and then started wondering how will I ever write another post and even…how did I ever write all that stuff I already wrote–I was spiraling negative thoughts again–my inner critic took over! And it was so hard to decipher–I just felt bad and exhausted with no hope in sight. So I wrote in my journal and it helped!–so I thought I would share with you my technique.

First of all, in journaling you must tell yourself that no one is going to read this ever! –and mean it and believe it. Then you let loose with all your feelings. I started out saying ” I feel horrible! I can’t remember who I am or how to feel good.” Within 2 sentences though I remembered, ” I used to feel this way all the time as a child.” And then, “Oh yes this is childhood pain coming up to heal. I just had a wonderful vacation! My inner child is expecting to be punished.” Then my own compassion kicks in with ” I need to be extra nice to myself. I am being too hard on myself. Do nice things for myself today. I am a highly sensitive person. No wonder I am tired–vacations are highly stimulating–just give myself extra time. Everything is going to be okay.” Before long I am cheering myself up. I have over-ridden my inner critic–that negative voice inside my head. This process always amazes me because I feel like I should be “fixed” by now and should never feel bad again. But that is the negative voice in my head–the pressure from my mother to “be happy — just get over it, you are too sensitive blah, blah, blah.” That is the opposite of what I needed as a highly sensitive child. On vacations I would get overwhelmed, over-tired with all the new sights and activities. I know I deserved kindness instead of impatience, rest instead of guilt for slowing them down, compassion for my ability to see the beauty in the small things like nature instead of annoyance about my questions and my disappointment in their lack of carefulness with my feelings. There was nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me now. My only mistake was believing them when they blamed me. I don’t believe them and choose to be around people who are safe and kind and who like me easily. My husband is one of those people and was the first to remind me to not be so hard on myself and to take it easy. He was right.

Do not be discouraged if this technique of journaling does not come so easily to you yet. This takes a long time and lots of effort deciphering the truth of what you went through and what you truly deserved as a highly sensitive child. The book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is SO helpful in guiding people through the journaling process that helps unblock creativity (finding your voice and your true self!)

Many different techniques help me to find my voice and vitality again. Sometimes it is playing my songs when I am feeling so lost I don’t remember being able to write songs. Reading your own journal helps too especially if you are the kind of journaler who ends up feeling hopeful after you write. (You have to make yourself do it–it doesn’t come natural to read your own stuff when you are feeling bad about yourself–you’ll be surprised how your own words lift your spirits.) Other times I read books or blogs by people with a compassionate voice and I recover my own compassionate voice. Elaine Aron wrote the book on “The Highly Sensitive Person” and was the catalyst that started the HSP support groups that have grown and spread in cities and online. Online, I read her article on “the problem of bearing an unbearable emotion” that she wrote in her newsletter for Feb. 2006 and I immediately felt “found and validated” just by her compassionate words–my energy came back and I was excited about my life again. I hope my blog does the same for you.

I was fortunate to have some time to find myself and work on myself and read self-help books and write in journals while my children were growing up because my husband was so grateful that I was home raising emotionally healthy kids–he is a “thinking” type although a highly sensitive guy (an INTJ), whereas I am a “feeling” type (an INFJ). (See the book by Keirsey and Bates in my Recommended Books section for a test on temperament types.) He had an even more difficult childhood than I did and is grateful for my compassionate ways. When I think of how far I have come, it feels rather miraculous so I want so much to help others who are as lost and hiding as I was. I believe that those of us who are the most sensitive and almost destroyed are an important resource to this planet if we can join together and rise up as a voice of love, peace, and compassion. The fact that you are feeling beaten down is the very indicator that your sensitive ways have been misunderstood and need to be put to better use. All you need is a witness to validate the injustices you have suffered and then you can rise up and start speaking your mind and being a messenger of compassion that the world needs. DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER PEOPLE! You are exactly the way you are supposed to be. Be kind to yourself and learn to love yourself.

Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life is a book I have been reading on and off for 15 years. The positive affirmations in her book I use daily now but felt so foreign to me when I first got the book. One of my favorites is “I give myself permission to be the best that I can be”. Growing up I was not allowed to express my authentic self (or be my best) because it threatened my narcissistic mother and she would withdraw her love and approval. My mother was jealous of my many gifts. I didn’t know I had any gifts at all because she was determined to control me and keep me close and, in her view, if I knew I was gifted I might leave her. That whole concept was hard for me to grasp because it would never occur to me to be that way or be jealous of a child of mine–it is my responsibility to help my child see all his/her gifts and how special he/she is. So this explains why I couldn’t have compassion for myself–I trusted so completely in my mother. And also then came the question “why would God give me a mother who was so manipulative and unloving?” That was another chapter in my life that I now have completely resolved. God did not arrange for me to have this emotional pain and hardship but has given me the inner strength and compassion to overcome it and become strong. Had I not had a mother like that I would not be reaching out to help others who also experienced a mother like that right now in this moment.

In this moment, I am happy and complete and grateful for all the pain I went through to make me this strong. But while I was in the pain and lost and alone and not knowing how to let God’s love in, I was not grateful–no way! But there was a pivotal moment when I was crying in despair that I became aware that no one but me was going to rescue me–of the two of us, my husband and I, I was the stronger one emotionally. Something Eckhart Tolle said in his book A New Earth helped a lot. He said something to the effect of… I am not all that happens to me–I am ” the presence” that observes all that happens to me…. It made me realize I am not this abused child who is forever a victim. I am all the wisdom from what I have learned from it and can comfort my inner abused child through it. I still keep learning it over and over and each time it gets easier to find myself again. So do not give up. You who are hiding and afraid to speak up–it’s okay and you have every right to be afraid. But that it is not all of you. You have a gift, a wisdom, a compassion, that is sorely needed in the world. Don’t let the bullies and controllers and competitors win. They are not like you and so cannot understand you. But you can understand you! You are on this planet for a reason exactly as you are. Change only the people you are around. Elaine Aron says that HSPs have an easier time overcoming depression just by changing our environment to being around people who love us and accept us as we are. She says “get out of competitive environments where you have to fear that you will be judged, rejected, or seen as a failure, and stay around those who like you.” (see her newsletter the Comfort Zone , and the article called “A Few Happy Things Regarding Depression”). I am adding her website to my blogroll. It is hsperson dot com. I hope I have helped you to feel more hopeful and happy. You deserve it. You are a highly sensitive person and that my friend is a gift. Thank you to my readers.

Hi everyone. The day after I started writing on this blog for the very first time you might be able to guess what happened–I woke up in the morning with the dreaded feeling of Guilt like a black cloud hanging over my head. In the past I might have felt guilty and spiraled into negativity but thank goodness I knew what to do. I observed this feeling instead of falling into it. I was actually grateful for my new awareness of knowing and being able to label this feeling as Guilt. (I used to just feel numb or a generalized anxiety in the morning–it was a familiar and comfortable state–it was how I survived as a child.) I said to myself, okay this makes sense to feel this feeling today after the success of my first blog. This is Childhood Pain Coming Up to HealBecause Things Are Going Well. This powerful phrase has helped my husband and I so many times. I learned about this from John Gray–in one of the last chapters in his Venus and Mars book. This was one tiny section which I feel was so important he could’ve written a whole book on it for the impact it made on my husband and I.

I realized I had internalized shame that showed up after I had successes that made me feel good about myself. I believe ultimately as a small child that I believed “there is something wrong with me. I am guilty–it is all my fault.” To survive I had to repress all the anger and fear at having been blamed unfairly. I was a highly sensitive child. I desperately needed love and approval. So I settled for conditional love–I became an obedient and anxious shell of a person.

So I had expressed my true authentic self by writing my truth and my inner child was expecting to be punished and blamed and felt guilty. What I have learned is that the strong part of me which now knows the truth is able to comfort the wounded child in me that still feels fear and insecurity and blamed and guilty. See, as a child we make decisions and believe them so thoroughly it’s very hard to change the neural pathways in our brains that are so deeply set. The negative thoughts are so automatic–that’s how we survived. But we can change those pathways in our brains by becoming aware that the negative things we are saying to ourselves are from a wounded child’s perspective! As highly sensitive people, we know how to nurture and love and comfort other people through their self-doubt and fear–so by taking that wounded child inside of you and comforting yourself you can change your inner child’s beliefs about yourself and the pathways of negative spiraling thoughts. Realizing that I had to be the one to love myself and that noone was going to do it for me was a big revelation and turning point for me. Learning to comfort myself with positive affirmations and taking it easy when these big overwhelming feelings come up is now something that comes much easier.

So do I still feel guilty about my speaking out and writing on this blog? In a way the guilt is still there but it is small and completely manageable. And the part of me that is strong, wise, and knows the truth is keeping it in check–telling the wounded child in me that it is going to be okay and I am doing the right thing by speaking my truth. Do I have days when I still succumb to the child part in me and spiral negatively and beat myself up in despair? No, not any longer but I used to and it was a gradual process to get me where I am now. It used to happen mostly in the mornings and sometimes I couldn’t stop it right away. But then, there usually came a time of awareness a short time later, on the same day, when I realized this was a brand new layer of unbearable pain from my childhood that came up to heal because things were going well. My inner child felt safe enough to show it to me and say hey this really bad injustice happened to me and I needed to let it out finally. These are days when I put everything else aside–my list of things to do can wait until tomorrow. I allow myself to grieve for the childhood I never had and deserved. I comfort myself with my favorite things and am nice to myself like I deserved to be treated as a child-legitimate needs that went unmet until now are being healed–by me. I am a nurturing, supportive, comforting mom to myself. I can do it! And so can you. Ultimately this process is what a good empathic coach or inner child counselor is for. They are someone you can trust with the pain of your inner child to help you figure out the truth of what really happened and help you grieve. Then, when you can comfort yourself through the worst of the feelings that come up, then you know you no longer need the coach. You can take care of and love yourself through anything!

Professional Qualifications

Hello and welcome! I am an Intuitive and Empathic Life Coach specializing in Inner Child Healing. I have a Bachelors of Science Degree in Child and Family Services with an emphasis in humanistic counseling psychology, family dynamics, and child development. I provide support and guidance for healing childhood wounds and I personally have done my own extensive inner grief work and now I help others do the same. Through this blog, it is a privilege for me to provide comfort and emotional support to any soul who is in emotional pain and to let them know there is hope and someone who understands. I was trained and worked as a peer counselor in college and I have much experience counseling friends and loved ones and now I coach others through my Coaching website truevoicelifecoaching.com. So often a person just needs a companion to listen–someone to validate the complex and confusing painful feelings that come up when childhood wounds are triggered and that keep us from moving forward to becoming our true selves. Through my blog, this community serves as an “enlightened witness” for any person who needs to be heard about childhood wounds or if you have no family members or friends who understand your feelings. We look forward to hearing from you and appreciate ALL comments whether you want to leave a comment regarding the information found here to share your own experiences, or if you feel a connection and want to lend your support for what is said. Thank you to all my readers for your support of this blog. (For more info. please see ABOUT ME) I am now adding Reiki Energy Healing Sessions and Intuitive Readings to my list of services.

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News Flash!

The stigma against Introverts and HSPs is beginning to change on a global level. See the video called The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain on TED.com. Yay Susan!
Go to ted.com and search Susan Cain, then click on her video The Power of Introverts or you can copy and paste this is your browser: http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power
_of_introverts

This is Bill Gates favorite Ted talk! Also, Elaine Aron said that Susan is really talking about highly sensitive people (HSPs)– Even though 30% of HSPs are extraverts. (In my opinion these 30% are highly creative people often with ADD symptoms — they are extremely gifted and unique people not to be seen as needing medication but as a special gift to the planet if they allow themselves to let their creative genius flow and use meditation to find balance from their overstimulation.)

Disclaimer

I am an Intuitive and Empathic Life Coach providing emotional support and intuitive guidance from knowledge gained from my experience helping others and from my own personal healing journey. I am not a licensed mental health counselor and my Life Coaching and the information shared on this blog is not to be considered mental health counseling. I do not diagnose, treat, or cure mental health disorders. My Life Coaching services and the emotional healing information shared here are not to take the place of the advice, care, and evaluation from a licensed mental health counselor, psychologist, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, physician, or other licensed health care provider. Some clients may be referred to a licensed mental health professional.
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The information shown on this website is offered in good faith. Any decisions you make based on this information and the consequences thereof are your own. Under no circumstances can you hold the author of this blog liable for any plans, actions, and/or results of actions that you choose to take.

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